There’s only one explanation for how my husband, Rick, and I bought a 110-year-old Colonial Revival-style house with shag
carpeting, pink stucco bedrooms, and a sagging porch: We watch too much TV. On a show, a home renovation typically takes
eight episodes, which I translated into about three months. That time frame seemed so manageable, Rick and I figured we could
handle the project, even do most of the work ourselves. “I think we should buy it,” Rick whispered when we first saw the
house’s 10’-high cove ceilings, stained glass windows, and open floor plan. “Me, too,” I whispered back. Not that Rick and
I were completely naive. We were prepared to later discover noxious, expensive problems: a leaky oil tank, perhaps, or
asbestos in the industrial-looking ceiling tiles. What we didn’t expect was that our lucky finds would be the ones to upend our
budget, our timetable, and our relationship.Tools of the TradeI blame it all on the wainscoting. When we pried away sheets of photo-finished, 1970s paneling, underneath we found
wainscoting made of real quarter-sawn white oak, painted white but otherwise intact. One little unpainted spot behind the
living room radiator was the first tangible evidence that our house was once tasteful and well maintained. “It’s a shame to
leave that wood covered with paint,” I thought. “I’ll strip it; how long could it take?”After experimenting with various goops and pastes, I hit one that worked well, and soon I was readily peeling away long,
satisfying sheets of paint from flat areas of the wainscot. Curves and mouldings proved trickier, however, so I began attacking
these spots with increasingly smaller scrapers. I waged war on the paint this way for a couple of weeks, until I decided I
needed even tinier instruments to get into the crevices. That’s when I discovered I could buy a set of used dental tools on
eBay for less than $10. Armed with these minuscule tools, I started to scrape paint away from the curves, cracks, and
mouldings of our living and dining room wainscot, a job that makes cleaning a bathroom with a toothbrush look easy. Over
the next few months I spent so much time with these little scrapers that I gave them names: Captain Hook, Baby Hook, and
Twirly Whirl.

Paint stripping became my hobby, a calling, and an obsession. Soon I began studying the stripped woodwork in public places
(lots of it done pretty badly, I’d say) and reading up on it in my spare time. I even found a New York Times article about a
70-year-old woman who spent decades peeling every bit of paint off the woodwork in her Brooklyn brownstone. Once she
finished, she missed the challenge so much she looked for another house on which to work. That article brought me back
from the brink—sort of. “I will not become her,” I vowed, but I have to admit there’s a Zen-like attitude that comes with paint
stripping. At first, the paint peels off in one big strip from the flat surfaces, then tools gradually work out the rest. It’s a slow,
meticulous process that leads to meditation. I even came up with a mantra. “Progress is progress,” I repeated under my
breath, as I moved painstakingly through the rooms, panel by panel.

When you’re working on a house while living in its pink stucco attic (after evicting the dead squirrels), and shaking your suits
free of plaster dust each Monday before going to work, I guess it’s inevitable that tempers will flare. I was so tired I looked
forward to the work week so I could sit still for a few hours. After a while Rick got a little sick of hearing about Captain Hook
and mantras and the paint colors our house had once been (white, mustard-gold, mint-green, and blue). During the 18 months I
spent stripping woodwork, he repainted the porch, updated the electrical system, renovated a bathroom, chipped away the faux
brickwork in the den, and built a new fireplace mantel. As Rick crossed one project after another off the list, he grew
frustrated with my slow pace. “You’re the one who wanted to redo dining room,” I reminded him. “We’d be done by now if I
wasn’t stuck stripping paint.” Then we exchanged a few more words—“You’re mean and impatient” and “I can’t take this
anymore!” are the ones I remember—and I threw a tangerine at him.

Avoiding an Emotional Mushroom FactorAs we watched our dog eat the tangerine and vomit it back up, we realized that it wasn’t a good idea to continue the way things
were going. “I can’t stand how crabby you always are,” I said, simulating crab pincers with my thumbs and waving them in his
face. “You’re right,” Rick replied with a small smile. “We can’t keep fighting like this all the time. We’re on the same team
here. Let’s be on each other’s side.” From then on, whenever one of us got a little testy, we’d look each other in the eye and
say sincerely, “Honey, I’m on your side.” Usually it worked.We also came up with what we called “together weekends,” times when we would both work on the same project rather than
splitting up the tasks. In this way I learned all kinds of things: how to cut and tape drywall, why 2x4s don’t measure 2″ by 4″,
how to use a band saw. Rick learned to strip paint, although he never grew to love it the way I did. (Actually, his reaction
was, “This kind of work is why they invented the word toil.”) Nonetheless, he did develop an interesting stripping technique
involving brute force and steel wool.

Then we discovered a lucky windfall. We had devoted so much time to working on the house that we had no time to spend
money on clothing, vacations, or eating out. That savings, combined with a larger-than-expected tax refund (thanks to
deducting mortgage interest and property taxes for the first time), left our bank account a little plumper than we expected,
so we explored a novel idea: hiring contractors to finish the job. Unfortunately, we could only put this concept into practice a
few times before the money ran out, but we did manage to have the exterior painted, the wainscoting stained, and the floors
refinished. The house looks pretty good now, but more important, we live like regular people, with time on weekends for bike
rides, watching movies, and having friends over for dinner.

Of course, having dinner guests is a challenge given our as yet untouched appliances—a broken stove and a refrigerator that
doesn’t close properly. That’s why we have plans to renovate the kitchen, starting this year, but what Rick doesn’t know yet
is that there’s one wall of painted, exposed brick that I’m just dying to strip.